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Fascinating Cryptocurrency Trends of 2018

Wednesday, April 04, 2018

Even with an ongoing cryptocurrency bear market, 2017 was still considered as a monumental year for the cryptocurrencies in general. From January to December of last year, the total market capitalization of the cryptocurrency market rose from 18 billion USD to more than 560 billion USD. Last year was a period when initial coin offering projects became a major hype, governments started some regulatory measures on digital assets, and institutional money started flowing. It cannot be denied that 2017 has been a big year for cryptocurrencies in many different aspects. As a relatively primitive form of technology, blockchain and cryptocurrencies still have a room for massive improvements in the future. There are also cryptocurrency trends that make their own impact every year. Some of them come and go while others stay for good. Know more about the five interesting cryptocurrency trends in 2018 and learn how you can adapt to the changing landscape of the cryptocurrency space.

ICOs will still play a major role in the market

The cryptocurrency space in 2017 was marked by a surge in ICOs and a heightened public interest in them. Although the overall hype on ICOs has slightly toned down since the start of the year, it is still expected that startup projects will still make an impact in 2018. ICOs may face a couple of hurdles from government regulation to skeptic consumers, but the influx of smart ideas and appreciation of ICO tokens are expected to pick up where they left off last year. Visit Coin Clarity to know more about ICOs and other crypto related information such as wallets, exchanges, and merchants.

Government efforts to regulate cryptocurrencies will still continue.

Last January, the cryptocurrency community was alarmed by the news about governments starting to intervene in ICOs, exchanges, and other related areas. Although cryptocurrency regulation is expected to stay as a hot topic for this year, the overall development is perceived as positive. All but one country in the March G20 Summit, for example, do not consider cryptocurrency illegal. Venezuela, Iran, Cambodia, and other countries are also planning to create national cryptocurrencies in the near future.

Bitcoin’s early scaling solutions are expected to take into full effect

During the end of 2017, the Bitcoin network became very congested, causing transaction fees to spike up to over $20 and transaction times to extend from 10 minutes to hours or days. The increased adaptation and implementation of SegWit and the Lightning Network is expected to alleviate Bitcoin’s growing problems on scalability this year.

Atomic swaps will become a major breakthrough

A new way of trading cryptocurrencies cross-chain and without a third-party was already introduced last year. The technology called atomic swap is expected to roll out in a few months on a larger scale, although it may still not reach mass adoption by the end of this year. The decentralized way of exchanging cryptocurrencies will, however, open up more opportunities for traders and investors to hold multiple currencies of their choice in the future.

There will be more businesses accepting cryptocurrencies as payment

Microsoft, Tesla, Wikipedia, and Overstock are just some of the big companies that have taken the lead to start accepting cryptocurrencies as a form of payment. As more regulatory measures are laid out and the prices of cryptocurrencies become less volatile than it was in the past few months, we may see a number of businesses, big or small, that will start accepting cryptocurrencies too.